


Silk and Steel

by conceptofzero



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-14
Updated: 2015-01-14
Packaged: 2018-03-07 13:23:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3174808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/conceptofzero/pseuds/conceptofzero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Snowman understands the power clothes have intimately.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Silk and Steel

**Author's Note:**

  * For [oxfordRoulette](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oxfordRoulette/gifts).



The very first thing she requests when she arrives at the mansion is a new wardrobe. The wrapping she wore through the desert had been serviceable but now that she’s no longer being assaulted by the constantly storming sands, she wants something other than the tattered remains of her old life. 

Doc Scratch quickly introduces her to Stitch, a squat green man with a scar across his face and a yellow hat with a white stripe. He eyes her up, shifting the pins from one side of his mouth to the other and talking around them like he has been doing so his entire life. “What sorta things are you expecting me to make?” 

She shows him, taking a sketchbook and quickly filling nearly fifty pages or more with designs. The once Black Queen (now Snowman, and though she liked the name, she had trouble still thinking of herself as such) is not a particularly great artist, but she has always been good at broad strokes and rough but simple designs. He watches her draw with a critical eye, growing somewhat less suspicious as he sees the clothes take shape. 

When he takes the sketchpad, he produces his own pencil and makes changes of his own. This time, she’s the one with a critical eye on what his changes are. They’re better than she expected from someone who looks as though he wouldn’t have a fashionable bone in his body. 

“I’ll get started. Don’t rush me on these.” He tells her, jerking a thumb over to the rack of half-sewn suits. “I’ve got all this stuff to finish first. You’ll get a uniform for now, and the rest if I ever have the time.”

He keeps the sketchbook tucked near, and when she exits the boutique an hour later, she does so in a black and green coat that sparkles like he’s sewn the universe to her clothes. Perhaps he has. After all, she’s seen the flashing cairo overcoat in the boutique, and someone had to make it change colours like that. 

-

Her next request is for bigger chambers. The room she has is nice, but it won’t do. The bedroom and parlor are one and the same, which means she can’t entertain guests without them seeing her bed, and she finds screens to be inconveniently tacky.

Worst of all though, she is running out of room in her closet. There are her work uniforms of course, the wonderful star filled coat that is so easily paired with a selection of dark shirts and skirts to go underneath. They’re comfortable cotton, breathable and meant to stand up to the worst she might encounter. Dark to prevent the worst stains from showing and dark because she looks the most threatening when there’s nothing else to draw away from the majesty of her coat. 

Next to those begins the real highlight of her wardrobe - the dresses. Stitch is always busy mending the Felt’s easily torn suits, but he still finds time to supply her with dresses based off of the notes she gave him or from patterns of his own design. Most of them are black and green, but he’s begun to provide her with colours other than those. She wears them when she can, dressing herself in dark purples and deep reds and lustrous blues. But each new dress takes up a space in her closet, and now she’s begun to spill out, forced to hang dresses from the door of her closet and on the hooks on the back of her door. 

The mansion is large and she makes her way through it, noting which rooms are used least and which offer the best choice for her. She needs more than a minor closet expansion. Snowman needs a room to become a closet for her, somewhere to hold a pair of mirrors and enough dresses to wear a new one every day for an entire sweep, far away from the various smells and odors found within the mansion’s walls. 

She finds such a room on the top floor, three rooms connected together to make one. The one is meant to be a study but she sees beyond the desk and shelves, her eyes quickly sketching out the racks on all the walls, breaking only to allow the door to open or close. Here she could place the mirrors, right in the middle, and there she could put hat boxes and over here, a bench to sit on when she changes her stocking or shoes. 

When she comes to Doc Scratch, he is quick to grant her request. Before she even so much as asks for the room, he is already turning over the keys to her. Your things have already been moved, he promises her in that not-voice he uses to speak inside of her head. 

And when she returns upstairs, she finds that he’s spoken truly - everything she needs is in her room, ready to be placed by her. In the spare room, she finds empty racks waiting for dresses and a pair of mirrors covered in a white drop cloth, and a soft bench that she is happy to sit on as she slips off her heels. 

-

Snowman does not have a favorite dress. To have a favorite dress suggests there is one dress better than all of the others. This is not true. There are many dresses she loves, depending on where she wishes to go, or what she wishes to do. 

There are, however, half a dozen dresses she likes best. They are;

1) The dark cocktail dotted by jewels. The bodice is covered with diamonds and pearls, clustered tight like a galaxy roaming across the tops of her breasts. It sparkles under the lights and shows off her long legs and bares her shoulders in a provocative way. She wears it when she goes out to eat in the City, letting the jems catch the light and the eyes. When she wears it, she truly is the center of everyone’s universe.

2) The emerald green ball gown that swells around her hips and hangs down the floor so when she strides just right, her feet can’t be seen and she looks as if she is floating across the floor. The colour is dark and rich, and she often wears a necklace of emeralds around her neck. She is not used to the long billowing skirts, but she likes the air of menace if gives her when she prowls across a room. Snowman does not wear it often, but when she does, she feels as if she has the world by the throat. 

3) The strapless dress in reds and blacks that hugs tight to her breasts and hips and brings out every single last dangerous curve. It is not meant for fighting, but it feels violent, like it might attack anyone at any moment. When the Felt goes gambling, she wears it and slinks through the room like a knife looking for a ribcage to be slotted between. 

4) The little black dress that dips low on top and hangs about her thighs, promising but never granting a tempting view of what is just a few inches above the hemline. She wears this beneath her starry trenchcoat, though few ever know its there. It isn’t often she seeks out Slick, but when she does, she wears the slip of a dress, knowing that she will not care if he tears at it or pulls it to pieces. 

5) The violet wrap dress, soft and comfortable, yet stylish enough to wear anywhere she wishes. When she brunches, she dresses in the dark, royal colours to remind all her ex-subjects and ex-enemies that she may no longer have a crown, but she is still a queen. It hangs off her knees when she crosses her legs and the wrap draws the eyes to the way it sits snugly on her hips.

6) The sheath gown, black and green, all covered in stars like her coat. It has the deadly grace of the ball gown and the sleekness of the cocktail dress, brought together to make something magnificent and powerful beyond reckoning. She wears it when the Felt performs, her bow moving across her violin strings like a knife across a bare throat. In the hard spotlights, the dress all but glows, a thousand stars catching the light and shining back with full force. Her pearls and her shoes are green too, shining in the bright lights until there is nothing but light and sleek, sharp movements. 

Each has a time and a place where they are most welcome. They are hardly alone in her closet either, where a near full rainbow of dresses waits for her (no yellows or gold, no matter how much it might look lovely against her shell. On this she refuses to budge). If she wishes, she can go weeks without wearing the same thing twice, and she often does when the mood strikes her. 

And yet, in a box tucked in the back of the closet are the wrapping she wore when she arrived at the Felt Mansion. She’ll die before she ever wears them again, but she keeps them all the same, sometimes taking the lid off the box they’re stored in to run her fingers over the brittle, sunwashed fabric. When she had nothing, these were what she wore. Now she wears the finest fabrics that Doc Scratch can provide, in all styles and colours. It stills feels important to keep them, and to remember the time when she lost everything, in case she ever forgets to appreciate the majesty of choice available to her now.


End file.
